I've posted several times about the dangers of GMO's, and posted the film "The World According to Monsanto". GMO's are illegal in Poland, and riots have ensued in France because of them. Well, here's reality turned on its ear.
Monsanto wins prestigious World Food Prize
If only, if only it were a joke……..If you thought the world couldn´t get any crazier, news this week that a Monsanto executive is to receive the World Food Prize for its services to agriculture might make you think again.
Robert T Fraley, Executive Vice President of Monsanto, along with Mary Dell Chilton, founder of biotech giant Syngenta, have been announced as this year´s winners for the prestigious food prize, which has a $250,000 reward. Fraley, who has been with Monsanto throughout much of its dark history, is being lauded for his invention of GMOs, while Chilton is applauded for spending “the last three decades overseeing the implementation of the new technology she developed and further improving it to be used in the introduction of new and novel genes into plants.”
The accolades are set to be given to these cretinous executives on World Food Day, October 16. If this insane plan goes ahead without a public backlash, we will be rewarding CEOs who have systematically:
- Monopolized our food and driven millions of farmers into poverty
- Designed dangerous artificial growth hormones for dairy cows
- Created franken-seeds and prohibited investigation into their long-term effects
- Tried to block the labelling of GMO foods
- Patented food in a sickening attempt to own nature itself (Hey, Monsanto! I grow my own broccoli, what you gonna do about it?)
- Enforcing these patents by suing and threatening smallholders and family farmers who violate Monsanto´s iron rule
- Caused mass suicide among millions of farmers whose GM crops fail
- Invented pesticides that kill bees and endangered other wildlife
- And later had the audacity to launch legal action against the European Union after it finally banned bee-killing pesticides in May this year.
Yeah, okay, admittedly this is pretty crazy. It has also recently been confirmed that atrazine, hence, all triazines, decimate amphibian populations as well (sign the petition: http://www.savethefrogs.com/threats/pesticides/atrazine/index.html).
ReplyDeleteThere's no doubt that Monsanto is evil; they have a long history of being evil. But what solution does Permaculture offer to the profound problems facing humanity and the planet in the forseeable future. Long before anthropocentric global warming came into effect there were massive famines caused by drought, natural disaster, etc. with no mitigating agent available. After the implementation of mechanized agriculture, many of these incidents of massive human death were mitigated because countries who had implemented mechanized ag had surplus supplies which they shipped to the area in question. What can Permaculture provide to fill this void if we turn our backs on scientific developments? Many of the problems being potentially mitigated by GM are the result of our global society; crop disease, invasive species, etc., are being imported due to global traffic (for example http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/citrus-greening_n_3780984.html and http://phys.org/news/2013-09-halting-incurable-citrus-disease.html). Are we supposed to somehow turn back the clock? This is essentially the objective of Permaculture and I find that it certainly has its place but I fail to see how it is a comprehensive end unto itself; can you help me see this? Take, for instance, the recent earthquake in Haiti; if not for donations of SURPLUS food from other nations there would have been massive starvation deaths. What solution does the Permaculture movement offer for instances such as this. And this was an easily manageable situation; there have been and will be much worse! It just seems to me that once we are committed we must continue forward - responsibly.
An intelligent and thoughtful response, Wes. Yes, the issue is complex - but equally, Monsanto has demonstrated dishonest, unethical and abusive business practices, including buying off our democracy. And no one knows what the result of releasing "frankenstein plants" into the environment will be - it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible to future generations. Responsible is, as you point out, an appropriate word.
ReplyDeleteHuh?
ReplyDeleteHow the hell could this have happened?
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps part of the solution to the massive problems facing our global society are being responsibly explored by Professor Sandy Pentland, Director of MIT's Human Dynamics Lab. I'm trying to promote Dr. Pentland's call for a "New Deal on Data" as best I can: http://www.edge.org/conversation/reinventing-society-in-the-wake-of-big-data.
ReplyDelete